


wash up to the shore

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-01 21:19:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11494968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Sarah came back for her. To tell Helena that they’re sisters, and that she’s scared, and that she can feel Helena and Kira beating inside of her like baby hearts. In the toaster the bread turns slowly into toast. When it’s done Helena will put jam on it, and eat it. For now she just drinks tea. Warm leaves falling on her tongue. She misses the woods, but not enough for it to hurt; she can taste the trees and leaves inside her mouth and that is good.





	wash up to the shore

**Author's Note:**

> HEY I LOVE HELENA?!

Helena wakes from a dream about Sarah, again. In her dream Sarah had been standing in front of a grey animal that was as big as loneliness, and she had her hand out, and Helena couldn’t tell if the hand was reaching out to stop or welcome. Helena doesn’t know what the animal was; she thinks she might have made it up in her dream. Maybe she was the animal, only she doesn’t think she was. She thinks she was going to kill it. Sarah had turned around and seen Helena and her mouth had opened to say something

and then Helena had woken up. And now she is awake. She tilts her head to the side to watch light come in under the heavy wooden shutters. Her babies kick at her: _get up, mama, we’re starving, feed us_. It takes effort to sit up now; Helena does. She reaches for her book – flips through it to make sure the words did not wander off in the night, and then finds a blank page at the end. She draws the animal on the page and then bites her lip, rips the page out. She looks at it.

Four huge legs. Ears like big big leaves. Nose like a snake stuck onto its face. Tiny little tail. Hm. Probably made-up, but who knows; Helena has dreamed about impossible things before, and they have come true. She dreamed that Sarah cared about her, once. So.

She folds the drawing and puts it in the box by the side of the bed, with all the others – Sarah running after a sheep through a burning forest, Sarah wading through a field of mice and trying to keep them from biting each other open. Strange dreams. She doesn’t mind them, much. They hurt but it’s not her pain and because it’s Sarah’s pain she can share it, she wants to share it. Anything to keep Sarah from hurting more.

Helena climbs out of bed, lumbers over to the window and pulls the shutters open. Outside crows are nesting in the tree. Helena shrieks at them. They shriek back. Good morning, crows. Good morning, Helena and Sarah in the womb. Good morning, Helena in a cage. Good morning, Helena in the woods. Good morning to Helena’s _sestra_ s – and that’s all the drawings, Helena tapping her fingers against them until they are done.

She taps her fingers against her belly. Good morning, babies.

She taps her fingers against her face. Good morning, Helena.

_Sestra_ Irina has left Helena warm socks, sweaters and leggings and other cozy things. Helena puts on a sweater, pants, thick socks – she considers, and then puts on another pair of socks. The memory-book she slides under her pillow before she takes the staircase down.

When Helena puts her fingertips up against the kettle she finds that it’s still a little warm; it was used half an hour ago, which means that _Sestra_ Irina is out in the garden right now. Helena fills the kettle back up with water and puts it on the stove top, hums to herself as she goes through the pantry for food. Not a lot. _Sestra_ Irina keeps her own garden – the garden is only meant for one nun, so there isn’t as much food as Helena usually needs. Helena has been catching rabbits and squirrels to make up the difference. They’re happy, here.

They are low on bread. Helena isn’t supposed to go much further than the trees outside the convent, so she’ll have to tell _Sestra_ Irina that they need to buy more. She puts a piece of bread inside of the toaster and waits for it to come out. Her babies dream in circles; she dreams in circles. The memory of Sarah is humming in her chest like an electric light. She has been trying very hard not to touch it, for fear of smudges.

The time waiting for bread to become toast is not enough time to unfold the memory, carefully, feel it humming and buzzing in her hands. So she doesn’t. She brushes up against the edges of it, the beginning: the sound of footsteps on the stairs, coming for her. Whose footsteps? Neolutionists, coming for Helena’s babies? She was scared, she was furious, she was – a little bit – hopeful. Outside of Helena’s bedroom door the kettle shrieks so Helena leaves Helena there and turns off the stove, pours tea. It smells like warm. She holds it in her hands.

Sarah came back for her. To tell Helena that they’re sisters, and that she’s scared, and that she can feel Helena and Kira beating inside of her like baby hearts. In the toaster the bread turns slowly into toast. When it’s done Helena will put jam on it, and eat it. For now she just drinks tea. Warm leaves falling on her tongue. She misses the woods, but not enough for it to hurt; she can taste the trees and leaves inside her mouth and that is good.

The toast comes out of the toaster. Helena puts jam on it. It is good, when Helena eats it; just sweet enough, just enough crunch. She pops seeds between her teeth. When she is done with the plate she washes the plate and the mug. The sunlight pours like tea into the room of the kitchen. The mug gets clean. The plate gets clean. She didn’t use to wash mugs and plates – but she has been so many people, and she likes being this one. When she holds her hands up to her nose they smell like dish soap, lemon and clean.

Outside, the sun; outside _Sestra_ Irina in the garden, just where Helena knew that she would be. She doesn’t want Helena to work herself too hard, because of her babies. “I know,” Helena tells her – feels again the warm and private joy of speaking in her first tongue. “I’m not going to try to pull weeds. I just wanted to say hello.”

_Sestra_ Irina gives her a wave, manages to make it seem annoyed and loving at the same time. Helena waves back; she doesn’t put anything much into it. It’s just her fingers, moving through air. She walks through the garden. She knows some of the names of the plants. That one is lavender. That one is sage. That one is basil. The vegetables are on the other side of the building; Helena knows them too. But instead of seeing them she wanders back around.

“I wanted Sarah to see the garden,” she says quietly. She rubs one of the leaves between her fingers so that they’ll smell like a different kind of lemon – sharp, a little bit like earth. _Sestra_ Irina nods. She thinks it seemed like the two of them had a nice conversation.

“Yes,” Helena says. “And I’m happy to be here with you. But I wanted—” She wanted to give this to Sarah. She wanted to walk with Sarah through the garden and say _these are the names of the plants that I know. I wash dishes now. My hands are always so clean, and they smell like growing._ Instead she put those hands to Sarah’s head, Sarah’s heart, Sarah’s belly. She hopes that was enough. She wishes Sarah had stayed the night, so she could hear her sister breathing again.

_Sestra_ Irina taps her heart, once.

“I wanted that,” Helena agrees. She stands over _Sestra_ Irina, but in a way that doesn’t block the sun. “When my babies are born,” she says, “I’m going to find Sarah, and I’m going to help her fight all the monsters that make her tired. Then maybe she’ll come back here with me. We can see the garden together.”

_Sestra_ Irina wonders about Helena’s babies. Helena doesn’t really know about Helena’s babies; they’re an impossible dream, a looming panic. If Sarah hadn’t been so scared, Helena would have asked Sarah about them. Like: what do I do with them, and: what if I can’t do this on my own. But Sarah was sick with fear, fear rolling off of her in waves, and Helena knows how to be steady. So she was steady.

“I’ll take them with me,” she says, instead of any of those things. “One strapped to my chest—” (she demonstrates) “—and one to my back.” _Sestra_ Irina laughs. Helena laughs back, but softly. She watches birds rise up out of the trees in the distance. “Do you want birds for dinner?” she says. “I haven’t made a bow yet, but I can.”

_Sestra_ Irina taps her belly and frowns. Helena resists the urge to roll her eyes. “I did it before,” she points out. “I killed deer. I carried them on my back.”

But she shouldn’t anymore, that’s what _Sestra_ Irina thinks. Helena doesn’t want to agree with her. Helena wants to rip people apart when they say that Helena should stop being Helena, for the sake of her babies. They don’t even know who she is. _Helena_ knows, and wishes other people would stop trying to take it away from her.

“Alright,” she says instead. “I will only use traps.” Satisfied, _Sestra_ Irina goes back to the garden. Helena sighs and goes back into the building. Sarah walked: here, through this hallway, up these stairs. Sarah stood in the hallway outside of this room for a moment – was she frightened? Was she excited? Was she homesick, the way Helena is always homesick for her?

Helena opens the door and Sarah keeps on not being there. It doesn’t hurt much anymore. Besides, she likes this room: the warm wood, the soft bed, the lamp that throws bright shapes onto the walls when she turns it on. Someday she’s going to have a room that is entirely her own, and she’s going to fill it with so much sunlight. For now this is good. It’s a place to dream in. It’s a place where Sarah was, telling Helena that she wants to be a good sister to her.

The memory book dreams to itself under Helena’s pillow. Helena sits down and pulls it out. In the book she is still a little girl, holding a knife; little-Helena isn’t old enough to have wings, yet, just a few feathers. She is eighteen, maybe. She is terrified. Helena will have to write books and books and books before she gets to the point where Helena isn’t terrified anymore. She’ll make it there. She has time.

When she closes the book there is only one Helena, and that Helena isn’t scared. That is a nice thing to be: not scared. This afternoon she will check her traps, and bring in animals, and make them into meat, and help _Sestra_ Irina make that meat into dinner. Helena will go to sleep and she’ll dream Sarah’s fears, to make them bearable. When she wakes up the crows will be back in the trees. The weight of tomorrow is heavy enough that Helena can stand on it, sit on it, let it carry her like a boat forward through the dark sea of the future. It is solid; it’s built out of wood by _Sestra_ Irina’s sturdy hands and Helena’s own sturdy, dependable hands. They have always been her hands. No matter what she does with them, they will always be her hands.

With one of them she lifts a pen, and with the other she spreads the book open in front of her again. Little-Helena’s fear screams at her from between the lines – but it’s trapped there, and it can’t hurt Helena anymore. It’s not trapped like Helena in a cage. It’s trapped like Helena seeing that her past self is scared, and loving her for it anyways. Helena writes her story from the future, and because of that she can make it hopeful. She thinks it’s going to have a happy ending.

**Author's Note:**

> Take some time to feel alright again  
> Let's rewind 'til you and I begin  
> Take some time for these wounds to mend  
> Let's rewind to where you and I begin  
> \--"Rewind," Wingtip
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
